January 4th, 2019
Regretfully, Axact is still in business on the Internet today. Look at their website, www.axact.com, and remember everything you see is ‘smoke and mirrors.’ They ‘hide’ in plain sight under the corporate umbrella as the ‘World’s leading IT Company.’ I am told they have no exportable product! Please click on all their links, look closely at the pictures, platforms, core ‘products,’ business units, etc. Just remember the true nature of the business!! You have never seen anything like this before.
Axact has about “25,000 employees and representatives worldwide” (their words) selling their products. They have websites for 700-900 fake schools, 400-500 fake accreditation mills, 100+ ‘spider web’ type sites designed to lure the potential student into one of their schools, along with other support sites used for support. Axact is currently updating some of their older schools and changing web to .education (.edu) extensions. Beware!
Since their fake schools are touted as being ‘American,’ they have created about 20-35 U.S. type accreditors which show the American Flag, U.S. Capitol and appropriately use red, white and blue colors. They even gave a Washington, DC address to a school or accreditor. Axact tends to use addresses for many schools in Southern California, more than any other state. Prospective students are lured into these schools by promise of great jobs requiring a degree, hefty scholarships, etc.
So you can better understand the magnitude of Axact, when the FIA raided their print shop in May, 2015, in Karachi at night (when Co-founder and CEO, Shoaib Ahmed Sheikh accompanied them), they seized 2,200,000 blank diplomas, transcripts, accreditation letterheads, etc. which the FIA General displayed to the press. Axact officials were masters at “Fake News” long before our current politicians made this a daily commonplace. Axact is the master at using all aspects of social media, along with fake free press releases, to hype and support their fake schools and business acumen.
Axact has sold millions and millions of fake diplomas and transcripts to individuals around the world since its formation in 1997 (initially only sold term papers and other scurrilous documents), before they purchased their first diploma mills and started sell to these wares. Afterwards, Axact began creating their own fake school in about 2003, by borrowing pictures of buildings, people’s images and identities, stock photos, or anywhere they took a notion to, adding text from companies and school sites around the globe, all resulting in what we have today. Sometimes they move so fast in creating a ‘new school’ they make an error and forget to change a name or two on a site, thus the schools ‘link up’. Or you can connect them through ‘tracing’ their faculty or accreditation. Several schools, including Gatesville, offer an “Online University Certified Education Associate” position where the associate keeps a percentage of tuition paid by the student, Silver 40%, Gold 50%, and Platinum 70%!! Think about this! I must compliment Axact on the finest graphics I have ever seen on these type sites.
Even after the diploma and transcript are sold, Axact employees have mastered squeezing additional monies from ‘graduates’ via the need for ‘legalization’ of their documents via Embassy stamps and seals, US Dept. of State Apostille Certification, etc.
Besides their size and world market via the Internet, Axact stands alone in another area. Generally, a diploma mill is finished with the buyer after they make the sale, maybe a verification to an employer later on.
Not with Axact! This is where their relationship takes a dramatic turn for the worse. Axact employees, those involved in the “Upsell” then tighten the screws on their ‘graduate’ with telephoned threats of arrest or deportation, impersonation, extortion, blackmail, supported by using phishing and spoofing techniques. They impersonate officials from law enforcement, government, regulators, Embassy personnel, even our Department of State, White House, and Department of Education in order to make this part of the fraud work. We have seen single victims of extortion by Axact in the range of $800,000+. There are also reports they may sell the credit card data they have amassed through their diploma sales. And, at one point, Axact recorded all these calls!!
Axact’s main target for sales is the Gulf Region, with the United States accounting for only about 34% of their sales. About 75,000 diplomas and transcripts have been sold in the USA. Axact reached the billion dollar sales mark in 2013-2014. Just think how long these fraudulent credentials will haunt the academic and business world in the future.
Like no other mill we have observed, Axact has diversified into other frauds (with web sites), including a publishing house, job placement companies, recruitment entities, term paper, dissertation mills, and research entities, ’reputation rebuilding/repair’, automobile importing, and travel sites.
Axact has probably stayed in business ‘in plain sight’ for 20+ years because of rumored connections with organized crime figures, connections with money laundering for the Pakistan government, their intelligence service ISI, or their military. (Many former Army officers, Colonel and Lt. Colonel are executives in Axact-What does this tell you?) I have never observed a case where a Judge admits accepting a $50,000 bribe to acquit the 14 Axact executives, which he did; a grenade is thrown into the house of a Axact former prosecutor; an Axact official on the eve of his ‘spilling the beans’ is assassinated on his way home one evening; several prosecutors were grabbed off the street and ‘re-educated’; cooperating employees disappear, etc. I hope you can see the magnitude and true colors of this fraud. This is just a brief glimpse. The FBI is investigating this.
Please look at these four fake school websites, two older, two newer. Once you have absorbed these, this will put you in a better position to instantly recognize their thousands of sites. Trace everything–accreditation, faculty names, and unusual word grouping, or misspelling!!
Gatesvilleuniversity.com
Manhattanbayuniversity.com
Sangonio University
Olford Mount University
A copy of the Pakistan FIA (Federal Investigation Agency) report on Axact (with school names) can be found on the web site of book, Degree Mills, which I co-authored at www.degreemills.com.
Additional Links:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/pakistani-diploma-mill-of-fake-degrees-exposed/articleshow/62528628.cms
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42579634
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/world/asia/fake-diplomas-real-cash-pakistani-company-axact-reaps-millions-columbiana-barkley.html
Allen Ezell, FBI Agent (Retired), Education Consultant – Allen Ezell founded and was the head of the FBI’s DipScam diploma-mill task force. He is also the author of Counterfeit Diplomas and Transcripts and Accreditation Mills.
ACEI-Global 